


Drift

by Sarah1281



Series: 31 Days of Newmann [6]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: M/M, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24049582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah1281/pseuds/Sarah1281
Summary: Newt and Hermann and the Hivemind in the drift. It can be difficult to keep anything straight.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Series: 31 Days of Newmann [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1726903
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Drift

This drift was better than the last one. 

It had to be better than the last one. 

The last one nearly killed him. 

Their planet was dying. 

It hadn’t worked before but they didn’t have time to wait any longer. 

When faced with extinction survival was the only thing that mattered. 

He hated when people talked about ‘normal’ families. 

He didn’t know what a normal family was but he was pretty sure he had never had one. 

He didn’t know if that was something to be upset about or not. 

He was seizing on the floor and he was finding him on the floor and oh no he couldn’t be dead he just couldn’t how could he do this without him. 

Some talked about ethics but what use was being the doomed moral victor? So righteous and perfect and dead? They could argue once they were dead. 

He was German so they had to hide the pickle and the fall of the wall and never again and he barely had any memories of das Vaterland. 

He thought this would be worse. He thought this one might actually kill him and he was so damn scared but rock stars didn’t quit just because it was hopeless. 

The old inhabitants were much fiercer and this should have been easy. But the new ones were so tiny but so clever and were almost even capable of keeping up. 

He would never get used to the ‘doctor’ in front of his name. Walking back into that room after defending his dissertation to be greeted with a warm smile and a “Congratulations, Doctor” would stay with him forever. 

Rock stars didn’t betray their long-standing conviction that titles didn’t matter to ‘I’m a doctor’ their way into a packed public shelter and they certainly weren’t stupid enough to announce to everyone around him that he specifically was the one the kaiju were gunning for. 

They hadn’t realized the creatures that continued to combat them were simply creations and artificial ones at that. Organic creations against synthetic creations. Each a proxy fighting over a world that could not possibly contain both of them. 

The first time he’d been rejected and he didn’t even have time to cry or process or anything because people were there and he would be damned if they were going to see him cry and maybe if he pretended he didn’t care then he could fool the world. 

He was going to die and he couldn’t let that happen he had almost lost him earlier. He had been so mad at Pentecost and he was never mad at Pentecost, he respected the man and the ideal he was trying so hard to personify to ever be mad. But it was madness. He was going to die alone and he could do nothing to help him. 

Screams. There were always screams. The creatures screamed when they were built and they screamed when they were sent and their fellows screamed when they died. Sacrifices had to be made and if it weren’t for the invasion that needed to proceed then the creatures would not exist in the first place. 

It’s his first day and he’s so nervous because this is absolutely insane this isn’t how life works some day he can barely wrap his mind around the fact that monsters are real and monsters are coming for them all and that maybe, somehow, he can stop it. Can try to. But he’s not a soldier and he has faith in himself but there’s no way that’s going to be enough. 

He was so scared and useless, doing his best to guess when asked but it wasn’t his specialty and if he hadn’t been given permission to go he would have somehow ended up at his side anyway. 

It was so slow, it took so long, they couldn’t make the portal open any more frequently or create a new one. They were running out of time. Each mistake could be their last. 

He had read the book of letters John and Abigail Adams had sent each other and had refused to admit that it made him wish that he could have something like that one day. He wasn’t a child and, really, he knew better. 

The fear. The fear of dying before being able to get any usable information, the fear of having the information but dying before being able to communicate it. Selfishly, the fear of dying and it was unnecessary because the plan was going to work. 

There was another mind. A foreign mind. A mind they could barely understand and that could not withstand them. They could feel it, flickering out, barely even there and they could get nothing but they would be able to find it again. They would be able to retrieve it and they would learn more. 

He lost track of the days when he wasn’t in school. He wasn’t idle, of course not. There was so much to do and so much to learn and adventures to go on and trying to pack every last ounce of freedom and creativity and exploration into a few short weeks before he had to go back to who the world decided he should be. 

The plan was not going to work. 

The creature came back. There were two of them now. 

He knew that he couldn’t possibly have this much in common with someone and not either love them or hate them as passionately as he was able to. 

He couldn’t let him go alone. What would be the point of even being here? What would be the point of…of anything? He couldn’t watch him die. He had watched so many people die. Not this one. The world wasn’t going to take this one from him. That might just kill him. 

He used to be sent to bed right at 8 because they said it was important to have a consistent bedtime and X-Files was on at 8. He used to sit on the floor in the doorway reading Animorphs by the light of the hall. When they wanted to get into the Yeerk Pool they had to get past the Gleet Bio-Filter that would destroy anything but a human and a Yeerk together. This was just like that. Hard to believe it was real but, then, if dimensions to other worlds were real why not this? 

The mind was there. The creature. What was it called? They were so small and fragile and how long did they live? What was time on their side? They had to get it back. How could they get it back. It had connected to the Hive, it had a brain. They had to send another brain. Send an undeveloped creature. Bait the trap. 

It was like an invisible wall between them when they first met. It was good he hadn’t been the first one to send the letter because – even if he had heard of him, which he hadn’t – he never would have been brave enough to metaphorically cold-call someone he admired like that. He would have had to become an expert in the man’s field and that was far too much work for what would likely end up just being a bitter humiliation. 

Many mistakes, too late to change now. Too late to save their world. There was no choice, truly, if one valued their survival at all. It did not matter what they had to destroy to save themselves. 

With the letter, well what else was he supposed to do? The was easy to find if one was willing to put in the effort. Not to the University and not an email. He spent at least an hour a day making sure he didn’t amass the collection of hundreds of emails everyone else had. But a letter. It would either be really charming or go over like a lead balloon and it was really best to know right now what kind of reaction he was going to get from him before he got invested. He was already invested. Being rejected once they had built more of a relationship was unimaginable. 

There could be no failure. If this did not work then they would have to try again. There could be no more breaks, no more waiting for these creatures to destroy themselves. They would try and try and try and try and never stop trying and one day these creatures would not be so lucky. 

There was a picture. There was a picture and he sent a picture and he got another picture back. And they talked about sending emails or exchanging phone numbers but they never did. It would all make it seem so much more…tawdry, almost. Like what they had transcended all the little mundanities of life and was just…more somehow. 

The creatures had a foolish plan. The portal was open, send their weapons to the other side. Foolish. How could they not have been destroyed long before now if they were so careless as to leave the door open behind them? 

He wasn’t sure when his life became a 19th century repressed gay love story involving poets (he hated poetry) but he couldn’t bring himself to mind. Two roads diverged and thinking of him made him think of snow and an old road and a carriage ride. 

The creatures would not win but there was a chance that they might and plans on top of plans on top of plans. There were already the seeds of the next attack if need be. Already a shape was forming. 

Had he ever been in love? How was he possibly supposed to know that? And if he did, what was he supposed to do about it? 

It had started off completely dispassionately but now they had gotten too close. Now this had taken too long. Now, beyond need, there was desire to decimate. 

The invisible wall. How was he supposed to explain about the invisible wall? It was kind of like being a mime, maybe. Not that he’d know firsthand. It was just a sense of how distant he was from the other person. It was usually a little up at first but it could come down and he could be fun and witty and talkative. 

They were the precursors. They were the ones who came before, the ones who would usher in the next era of their empire built on the bones of these unworthy beasts. 

He wasn’t like Mr. Darcy. ‘My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.’ It was just hard to trust again after a betrayal. Almost impossible. The first, second, and only thing he wanted to do was stay away from the person who hurt him. The wall slams up and nothing changes for anyone else but the whole world changes for him and he shouldn’t be here. 

These creatures had become desperate. That was evident. The same attack again and again and unable to simply create new creatures, better creatures, the way that they could. This was the last attack they would be able to make. They would lose. And even if they won, in the end they would still lose. 

It was a joke. It was a joke! Dear God it was a joke. Probably. He didn’t know. He’d made a couple of jokes and maybe they were stupid or maybe it wasn’t obvious he was kidding. People had said they thought he was mean when they first met him before and he was a lot of things but intentionally mean was not one of them. And he never told him what he did. He just left and the next thing he knew his letters were being returned to sender and his emails were bouncing back. 

How foolish to spend resources constructing a primitive barrier to keep them out. It had not taken their creature long at all to overcome it. It would have been simple to climb over it but that would not have made the correct point. It would not have made clear that there was nothing they could do to stop the inevitability of their destruction. 

You can’t move on when you don’t know what happened. Why did he do that? Why? Everyone told him he didn’t owe him anything, that he had a right to do what he did and he just had to deal with it. Well obviously he had to deal with it, what was the alternative? But still his brain kept ticking away and didn’t want to focus on the kaiju but instead what had gone wrong and if anything could have been done and just how enormous reality really was that he was never going to get answers or get to talk to him again. 

Weak. They were weak. They were outcast. They were given up. They could not even obtain the brain that had been sent specifically to connect to without nearly dying several times and being turned on by their fellow creatures at every turn. Weak and worthless. 

And then he was there and then he was handsome and his foolish heart forgot all about all the pain and the silence and just wanted to sit there and look at him forever. And all the years of hard work putting this behind him and moving forward crumbled like sand or like border wall. Walls can’t stop people, they can barely inconvenience monsters. And then they were together. And then everything he wanted to say was coming out wrong and he was so cruel and so heartless and so brilliant and so disastrously perfect and he couldn’t walk away if he tried. 

More creatures had been sent. Three this time. They had exhausted their resources facing two not long before. Three was more than was needed but as the portal continued to grow they were able to send three. Three would be faster. They had waited long enough for this world and they would not be waiting any longer. 

And then he was going to die. And then they were all going to die. And his death would be nothing special. And maybe there was nothing he could do. Maybe he was throwing his own life away as well. But Pentecost had asked Raleigh if he wanted to die begging to build a pipe dream or in a jaeger. And he had no jaeger. Extensive testing proved he should never go near one and would probably never be compatible with anyone. And maybe he was just throwing his life away too. But how could he possibly keep going if he didn’t do anything he could to save him? The best fencers in the world would never score a point against each other. He couldn’t remember the last time one of them had actually won an argument. 

He opened his eyes and he was alive. And so was the man at his side. And he could still feel the crushing weight of the alien hivemind.


End file.
